Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Things didn’t go badly today but they did go wrong. First, school went quite well. Lily is struggling with her latest essay, a report on Treasure Island, but she’s making good progress. Elise has advanced her technique for teaching phonics to the twins and that seems to be helping. I don’t know if I’ve written it down anywhere else so I’ll say it here: Henry’s biggest problem with school is reading directions. Heaven help this boy if he every has to assemble IKEA furniture.  Second, we returned to the amazing playground at Kings Park to have lunch at the cafe. A meal goes quite well when the kids have that amazing facility to enjoy while the food is being prepared. They also ate quickly and without fuss so that they could get back to their play. We even had some fun kicking around a soccer ball together (all six of us doing one thing, mostly happily). We snuck in a picture of our twelve feet just to memorialize the place. Third, we headed downtown to rent bikes.

“Whats On” is the Down Under vernacular for current events. On Monday, after school, “Whats On” for us was spectacular.  First, we headed up the coast about half an hour to the Aquarium of Western Australia (AQWA). This is a very regional aquarium with a unique and fascinating underwater tunnel. I can’t do better than let the pictures speak for themselves. Henry, especially, loved every second of it. The aquarium has other great exhibits, including a “danger zone” with tanks showcasing Australia’s infamously deadly species, such as the “bluey,” which happen to be about the size of a baseball, hard to photograph and quite lethal. I didn’t know “continuous recuscitation” was a thing but apparently its necessary to perform on a victim until the professionals arrive.  Finally, AQWA has a “relaxation room” with IKEA chairs and wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows for viewing a coral reef environment. Henry said that he would stay forever if he could. It was q

To Plan or Not To Plan. This is my existential struggle. It is my tendency, which I attribute to genetics (“Hi dad! Hi mom!”), to want to have a daytrip planned to the hour if not the minute. This approach doesn’t suit my wife, though she might tolerate it, but it definitely doesn’t work with kids. It’s a life lesson that adults can be the skeleton but the skin is going to hang however the children decide it will. Rottnest Island is a 30-minute ferry ride from Fremantle, a coastal suburb of Perth 30 minutes from our house. From the guides and blogs and podcasts, I have known for months that this would be on our itinerary. I received a lot of advice that we should spend a night on the island in order to enjoy its tranquility in the evening after all the daytrippers departed.  In retrospect, I wish I had pulled the trigger on that plan because obviously it’s impossible to book a room for six on the island with little notice, especially on a holiday weekend. So that decision

We had a school day that we had skipped in order to go to Penguin Island on Friday. We went back to the Town of Cambridge Library that we had enjoyed so much earlier in the week. Today I can’t imagine that I’ll be able to forget these details. On the other hand, this is a 400-day trip so here are two details I don’t want to forget.  Floreat Forum. Home to the Town of Cambridge Library and a sailcloth-protected play area. I taught 1st Grade math on a Dewey Decimal System Rug. Other library guests stopped by to decide where they should search for a new book. Awesome! After the library (and lunch) we went to the Botanic Garden in Kings Park. It was extremely popular on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. It’s easy to imagine that this scene is exactly what the landscape architects had in mind when they designed this place. We strolled down a wide lawn, past a garden dedicated to the Banksia, which is a plant that has been traced to Pangea and still found in Western Australia!

This was an idyllic day of adventure. Somewhere, months (or years) and thousands of miles ago, I read about a penguin colony you can visit about an hour south of Perth. You can even get there with moderate ease via public transit, although we didn't. We left around 10:45 and had an easy, 50-minute drive to tiny Shoalshead, just past the slightly-larger beach community of Rockingham. The Googles helped me find a straight-forward looking seafood "take away" joint a few blocks from our true destination and we found parking quickly. As soon as we sat down, though, Elise pointed out that the menu didn't match he name I had mentioned. The bad news is that my fish-n-chips joint was closed (maybe for the holidays, as seems to be common, or maybe for longer). The good news is that Elise got to have brunch in a restaurant, which is one of her favorites. At 1:00 we were on an adorable little ferry for the five-minute ride across to the aptly-named Penguin Island with wrist-b